7CD Box-set PNL Records/Audiographic Records – 9th February 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
It may be a way off Throbbing Gristle’s 24 Hours box set or Kenji Siratori’s 12-disc Merzbomb set, but seven hour-long CDs culled from live recordings from a 16-date tour of Japan in 2019 is a huge, huge thing to be faced with. It’s extravagant, indulgent, and frankly excessive, but a boon for fans – at least the really hardcore ones with an obsessive bent.
This is, of course, a document – and a painstakingly detailed one that that. One may question the need to release recordings of almost half the dates of a single tour, but but when improvisational artists play, no two sets are alike, so there was never any danger that this would feature seven discs with the same set played as a carbon copy. But what’s more, this particular tour was noteworthy for introducing new collaborations with legendary Japanese musicians: Akira Sakata (reeds/voice), Masahiko Satoh (piano), and Yuji Takahashi (piano).
As the accompanying notes outline, ‘The group is known for its creative intensity, that constructs and deconstructs material with utmost freedom and spontaneity, and which has been documented on 11 albums since its inception. The addition of such incredible musicians from Japan only heightens the kinetic nature of their playing and the speed in the exchange of musical ideas documented with this collection.’ And this box set, limited to 500 copies – which while not massive, isn’t exactly a tiny run, and as such indicates the kind of fan-base they have, not only in terms of size but also devotion – is being released to coincide with their next tour of Japan.
Each disc features a set performed by a different permutation of players, bookended by sets by Paal Nilssen-Love / Ken Vandermark, with all the variants of the duo with the addition of one to three Japanese collaborators covered across the span of the seven discs.
Each disc is split differently, demonstrating just how different each set was. The first couple of discs, featuring Paal Nilssen-Love / Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love / Yuji Takahashi / Ken Vandermark respectively, documents the performance on 4 December 2019 and contain a couple of pieces running for around half an hour and a couple more which run to the ten to fifteen-minute region. The next night’s performance couldn’t be more different, with the first two moments running for forty and thirty minutes respectively, followed by a further nineteen-minute behemoth.
I say it couldn’t be more different, but of course, all four sets are built around some epic jazz workouts which aren’t always easy on the ear – in fact, quite the opposite, as anyone familiar with the work around the Paal Nilssen-Love axis would reasonably expect.
Japan 2019, then, contains a lot of wandering, often straining, discordant, and manic sax, which runs every whichway atop thunderous arrhythmic percussion that clatters and thumps its way stutteringly, yet confidently, all over the place.
My appreciation of this type of brainbending jazzery has evolved over the last few years from a baseline of zero to quite digging its bold adventurousness and stubborn refusal to be shaped into anything remotely structured or normal, pushed outward by an immense respect for the way improv performers are capable of bouncing off one another with such intuition that they sound incredibly well-rehearsed. That’s real musicianship. But it doesn’t mean that it’s listenable all the time, or even half the time. And then there’s the fact that this release is seven discs: that’s around seven hours, or a full working day – of warped sax work and percussion which rattles and clatters all over and it’s still difficult to process, to contextualise. At times, it’s a frothing frenzy of energy; at other times, we hear the performers pull things back and create not only a space that’s broad, but allows for a leisurely stroll around the sonic geometry of their interplay, and as such facilitates broad exploration.
There’s simply so much of this that it’s easy to get lost and disorientated in the labyrinthine tunnels which twist and turn endlessly.
Ultimately, a Paal Nilssen-Love & Ken Vandermark album is the jazz equivalent of an absolute riot – and with this one spanning seven discs, it’s more of a war than a battle, and perhaps best digested in smaller doses.
AA
Aural Aggravation 